Idea - Virtual Selfbondage using VR Body Sensors

Selfbondage software and other kinky developments

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cjbusta
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Idea - Virtual Selfbondage using VR Body Sensors

Post by cjbusta »

If you're into PC gaming, there's a good chance you've heard of the Oculus Rift, a wearable VR display currently in development. You might also know that it has inspired a wave of VR peripherals such as the Virtuix Omni, Razer Hydra, Sixense STEM sensors, PrioVR sensors, etc.

The STEM and PrioVR (both in development and pre-orderable) are designed for full body motion tracking. While I'm interested but somewhat skeptical about their use for gaming, if you look up their capabilities, another use more relevant to this board should be obvious. I'm honestly amazed that I haven't seen any discussion about the idea here or anywhere else on the internet, which is why I had to come out of lurking and finally post. I know they're a pretty significant investment compared to a webcam, but the possibilities are amazing. Combined with a punishment method, e.g. e-stim, and appropriate software, they should allow virtual self-bondage in any number of positions. Prone, kneeling, hogtie, spread eagle, etc. I had tried to do something similar using a Kinect, but found that full body tracking didn't work very well with positions other than standing.The STEM has a range of 2.4m, while the PrioVR, which I backed for a pro version on kickstarter, has a range of 30-40m. Just a couple of ideas for more advanced uses utilizing the range, would be scenarios involving movement, such as forced exercise (pushups, situps, etc.) or pony step training, where you are forced to walk and punished if you don't raise your feet high enough.

Anyway, since neither system has been released yet, it's a bit early for any actual development, but I'm curious to hear what others think of the idea.
Tenderfoot88
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Re: Idea - Virtual Selfbondage using VR Body Sensors

Post by Tenderfoot88 »

Hmm, I knew about the Rift, and haven't been that excited. Personally, First Person Shooters are an occasional pleasure, and I'm more likely to go back to big, sprawly maps like Halflife, Marathon, Jedi Knight, etc than I am to play new COD du-jour. (Let alone all that "hold-X-for-cover" crap.) Star Citizen had me somewhat less disinterested, except for the fact that, like any decent flight/space sim, I'm going to need to see my real hand on my real keyboard. There are too many things to do that are actually important actions (having a direct impact on the game, not settings that are there because they're there on a real airplane (I'm not a real pilot, my character is; I think he can decide when to turn on his APU without my help)).

Not following it, I haven't been keeping track of the spinoffs...though having taken the time to do my research, I'm not overly impressed. (You can skip this paragraph if you're not interested in the debate on motion control in gaming, though people who get seasick might want to read the parenthetical at the very end.) I'm a bit of a traditionalist in my gaming - for me, immersion has nothing to do with the controls, it has to do with storytelling. Playing Thief, I don't see a low definition display with awfully proportioned characters roaming the virtual environment, I see a dark, steampunk city wherein everyone has money and doesn't want me to take it away from them. If I have a monitor strapped to my face and a bunch of sensors wrapped around my body, if I don't give a damn about what's happening to my character, I'm going to feel like a guy with a monitor strapped to my head who's wearing a bunch of sensors. And honestly, I liked the way Mirror's Edge went. I'd never be able to play that game in a sensor-input system. I can't do what Faith can do, but I can press the jump, crouch and punch buttons along with the movement commands in order to tell her to do that. And I think the disconnect between doing a normal, human sized standing hop and Master Chief launching himself 20 feet into the air (combining the Rift and the PrioVR systems) would be horribly jarring. My feet would be hitting the ground while MC was still ascending, and then I'd be experiencing a significant fall visually without the other senses. This is exactly the kind of disconnect that causes motion sickness (people not used to ships tend to pick the horizon as fixed relative to them, which clashes with what their balance is telling them - this subconscious confusion is nauseating, literally. As a corallory, try focusing on part of the ship, not the horizon, if you get seasick, since the ship is a stable environment relative to your body...relativistically, conceptualize the planet as wobbling around your nice, stable ship...as weird as it sounds, it works wonders for me.)

As it relates to self bondage, however, the motion sensor tech is far more interesting, especially things like PrioVR. However, there are a couple of problems involved. Developers of these things often don't release their developer kits for free. Microsoft did for Kinect, which is astonishing (particularly given the company) - Sony and Nintendo never did as far as I know. And these dev kits are often non-trivial expenses even for developers - some of the smaller designers end up renting devkits from their publisher rather than shelling out the money to buy their share of the profits. So there's no guarantee that you'll be able to customize uses for that PrioVR. Secondly, the sensor position is questionable for SB usage. It's pretty decent coverage, though their claims that the top like PrioVR can be used for professional motion capture seem a bit tenuous to me. (Yes, if you want to create an animated creature that moves like a human from a distance, it's great; you're not going to get the kinda of data for having it breathe realistically, or anything on how it positions its feet, etc, which is how you create a Jar Jar Binks rather than a CGI Yoda) However, it seems more useful to be able to customize your sensors for a given scenario...or just have a lot more resolution so you can pick up on things like struggling against a tight self-tie. Third issue, you're likely going to have trouble with your feedback system. Having an input system designed to interpret your body is all very nice, but the PrioVR driver is going to be designed to interpret those things into a set of digital commands. "move left, move right, jump, crouch, shoot, kick", etc. If you want to use a feedback system like e-stim, you're still going to need the hardware for that, which probably needs to be plugged into the signal source - the computer, so you don't get that 30+ meter range unless you have a 30+ meter long wire for your e-stim system. And if you're getting fancy with your feedback, you're going to need to wear 2 devices - the sensor net and the e-stim systems.

Personally, I'd rather start from scratch. Programming feedback systems for microcontrollers really isn't that hard (if input on pin 11, output on pin 12) unless you're trying to get complex behavior out of it (making a robot that can drive itself through a maze, for instance...or a city, if you're working for Google.) From there you can combine basic e-stim equipment (pads, straps, insertables, etc), the stim control box (which I suggest you don't make yourself unless you've done design work on medical equipment of that kind before - you need a complete understanding of how the body reacts to electricity as well as the electrical engineering involved...I think most EEs training on human electrocution is "don't"), the sensors, and your microcontroller, all working together. This site has a pretty decent set of tutorials on e-Textiles, though it's primarily focused on the relatively mainstream use of LEDs in clothing for raves and Olympic opening ceremonies and such.) You should be able to find some pretty decent small accelerometers and the like to detect movement. (The Hydra's magnetic field sensor system for position sensing might be useful (depending on the range of detection equipment), though I have no idea what that kind of sensor would be called.

There are definitely exciting possibilities with this kind of technology. Unfortunately, I doubt this second generation of gaming motion detectors will be capable of doing everything you need.
cjbusta
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Re: Idea - Virtual Selfbondage using VR Body Sensors

Post by cjbusta »

I agree with many of your points, but disagree with others.

Your thoughts on motion gaming is part of the reason I'm also skeptical of its usefulness for gaming. The other major reason is, well, I generally play games to relax. I usually want to sit in a comfortable chair and unwind, not exert myself by physically running around all over Skyrim. (That being said, depending on how effective the Virtuix Omni is, it might make exercising much more entertaining.)

On the other hand, the founder of Oculus Rift has said multiple times that for players to have a good experience, VR games need to be built from the ground up for VR, not just throw in VR support once the core of the game is complete. Especially if motion tracking support is included, games would have to be slower paced than many of today's games. You are absolutely correct that Mirror's Edge would be a terrible experience with motion tracking. "Detect player jumping, emulate spacebar" would be horribly jarring. If the system and game engine can actually track the player's feet and map it to the avatar's skeleton so the avatar lands as the same time as the player, it would be a much more immersive experience. Still, I can't imagine any way to make a game as fast paced as Mirror's Edge into an enjoyable experience with motion tracking, unless maybe the user is an Olympic gymnast.

As for the actual tracking capability, the videos I've seen have been fairly impressive. No, it's not perfectly accurate, and I agree that the professional motion capture claims seem a bit dubious, but as far as I can tell it would be more than accurate enough for selfbondage purposes. You can watch this video to get an idea of what I mean, especially the dancing zombie/skeleton part at around 1:27. It doesn't really seem to be designed to translate motion into "move left, move right, jump, crouch, shoot, kick," but rather to map sensor position to a virtual skeleton. I'm sure it's possible to translate it into simple commands like those, but it would make for a poor experience, whether in a game or in other applications. As an example for selfbondage purposes, if the skeleton's wrists are more than a preset distance apart or the knees are not in line with the ankles, it would trigger a punishment. It wouldn't be perfectly accurate or as flexible as I'd wish, but it would be capable of far more than something like the webcam based restraint software. (No disrespect to the developer, it's a fun piece of software, and usable by far more people than this idea, but using a camera has serious capability limitations.)

As for the SDK, the STEM SDK is currently freely downloadable and PrioVR says that every one of their kits will ship with an SDK. I'm not sure of the licensing terms, but they seem to be much more open to community development than larger corporations like Microsoft.

The remote e-stim, which I was just using as an example, does present a bit of a challenge. I've had my eye on getting an E-stim systems 2b and using something like these applications to control it, somehow strapping both the e-stim box and my old android phone to the body, but I haven't tested that.
Tenderfoot88
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Re: Idea - Virtual Selfbondage using VR Body Sensors

Post by Tenderfoot88 »

I definitely agree with the comment about VR games needing to be built specifically for it - even with just the visual display capabilities they're doing, there's a lot of very different issues to deal with. I've yet to see a FPS engine that supports turning your head without actually turning, which could be problematic for gamers if that becomes the actual turn function. (Oh hey, now my keyboard is behind me. How do I play like this?) (Personally, the big issue for me would be jumping off things - I'd be seeing the ground coming up from quite a distance away whereas the actual floor is substantially closer...even without the sensory disconnect-motion sickness issue, that's a recipe for hurting yourself. Though that's only an issue when you're combining full body motion control and Rift style VR goggles.)

As for viability of the motion trackers for self bondage, I guess it largely depends on what you're trying to accomplish, and just how detailed the resolution of those sensors are. Whenever I've considered this (in the hypothetical sense, thus far), I've thought more along the lines of using ropes or whatever for the major movements and using pressure sensors or the like to maintain posture. It would require significant experimentation to figure things out, but one could rig up a system that detects when you're relaxing against the ropes rather than actually holding the position. I'd use that for either a low intensity punishment that I'd have to suffer with while relaxing, or having it trigger a higher intensity punishment if I relax for too long. Since there's little motion involved, any kind of motion based sensors (perhaps excluding those that are well beyond my economical limitations) would have difficulty picking anything up. Going by your examples, I suspect your intent is to use the sensors as restraints (operating by punishment of going out of bounds) rather than supplementing a physical restraint system, so it's a much better option. And yes, while the camera is somewhat functional, even with a top notch camera and the best image processing in the world, forward-backward movement is very difficult for a single fixed camera to detect.

One trick for rigging an e-stim box or phone to you - there's a lot of different sizes of leather casings and the like that clip on to a belt. Some are actually designed specifically for specific phone models, but there's a lot of less picky designs. Your best bet for finding a decent variety would probably be a military surplus store. They make pouches to fit pretty much any kind of magazine, grenade, ration kit.... out there. From all that, you should be able to find something that works for every device you need one for. From there you can either strap it to an actual leather belt (which may or may not be going around your waist), or just run a relatively thin rope through the belt clip and tie that rope to whatever's convenient.
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